I started off at Ubuntu 8.04 I think, liked it and came across mint as a result, installed mint 8 Julia and found that easier on the whole - have had dual boots with XP/Ubuntu and also Mint/ Ubuntu combos back then and recently. Looked into unity and although it's not entirely ugly, I just don't like it as much as my current (sole) mint 14/cinnamon setup.

I've always looked into new distro's and others that seem to be getting attention, I've maybe tried a dozen or more in the last couple of years as a live cd or usb boot, (apart from debian which seems to have an issue with my wireless so renders it useless to me) but I just keep coming back to mint which just gets better and better so I see no 'advantage' in changing over to any other distro's at present . . .

Unity refugee here When Unity became the default DE in Ubuntu I installed GNOME Shell and MGSE, then switched to Lisa. Now I'm using Cinnamon and KDE.Recently I tried Unity again with Quantal. I like its elegant look and the HUD, but using HUD means living with the autohiding global menu bar (why, oh why do they hide it?!). I also hate online suggestions, because they always get in my way with irrelevant apps, and everytime I turned on my laptop, I had to disable it (why doesn't the Dash remember my filter settings?). Left-sided window buttons are hard to use, and the default theme's buttons look too big and "fat" - I prefer the Precise one. But other than that Ubuntu performed well on my system, and its effects are beautiful.Anyway, I'm now using the global menu bar in Mint KDE - there's a plasmoid for that, and I also have HUD in KRunner To keep up with the development of Cinnamon I use Bridge Linux (based on Arch) and cinnamon-git from the AUR. Well, Linux is all about freedom

Same here left the Ubuntu community in 2008 due to lack of apps for my photography works.Fast forward to this winter and zero photo shoots booked so thought to give linux another look.

Of course Ubuntu first check and tried the 12:10 Unity and was dismayed by the changes and new directions shuttleworth is taking. And the whole opt-in amazon and hated the Touch Tablet Icons bar feel to Unity. And like mentioned irrelevant searches getting in the way. But did find some higher end photography apps like darktable & Rawtherapee for my work.

So then started a search for alternate distro which was short as everything was Popping Up Mint!And did 13 with a quick redo with Cinnamon 14 and just felt right like a pair of well worn warm slippers..

I used Ubuntu 9.04 a couple years ago, and I generally liked it, but not enough to commit completely to Linux. Then, I recently tried 12.04, but I was relatively unhappy with the responsiveness of Unity. It's not the design that really turned me off, but the execution - I'm running a Pentium E5200 overclocked to 4GHz, and the interface still seemed unacceptably laggy. Mint has been great for me so far, though, and it may be the OS that finally ties me into Linux for good.

nomko wrote:There seems to be a really big switch going from Ubuntu users to Mint since the outcoming of the Unity DE.

I like Unity, but I'm not one of those who would dump a distro because of the default DE. With just about any distro I've installed here, I've ended up adding at least one DE/WM to use as an alternative.

But I think there are lots of people who, instead of switching to Mint after Unity came out, switched to Kubuntu, Xubuntu, etc.

And I know that there are many Debian users who didn't like KDE4 when it came out, or who who don't like GNOME 3. Can't recall hearing of any of 'em switching from Debian because of any of that, but I know of many who simply switched desktop environments.

unity didnt bothered me when it came out, 11.04 was a OK release, i can't say the same for 11.10 because it was annoyingly slow then i switched to fedora, opensuse, sabayon and free/netbsd. Then, i took a look on mint 13 based on ubuntu 12.04 that i had tried a bit and it was better than 11.10 and since i dont want a fancy desktop etc i like mint13mate version because it's fast, LTS and with a great out of the box experience.Right now i have win7/Mint13 on my main desktop and my main laptop.

I switched from Ubuntu to Mint. I didn't have the wherewithal at the time to install an alternative desktop on Ubuntu, and so Cinnamon (on my desktop PC) and MATE (on my laptop) were a blessed relief. Plus green is my favourite colour. Seriously, I was so grateful...

I never had Ubuntu with Unity installed for more than a week. I've used a number of distro's but grew very fond of Linux Mint, Bodhi and Sabayon before settling on Linux Mint 14 as my full time OS. I do not see myself using anything else.

''Any time you have an opportunity to make a difference in this world and you don't, then you are wasting your time on Earth.'' ~ Roberto Clemente

I used Ubuntu up until the end of December. I was still running 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) at that time, and I decided it was time to replace my aging OS. I chose Linux Mint because I could run a desktop-oriented interface (MATE, a Gnome 2 fork) without the background "cruft" code for things like Unity being installed on my system. Thus far, Linux Mint 14.1 boots as fast or faster than my Ubuntu 10.10 did.

I have come across a few problems I didn't have before, but they mostly seem to affect newer versions of Ubuntu as well, so my choice is not worsened by those faults.

They say that a three-year old can use Windows 8. I say that's a bit of a regression. When I was three, I could use DOS.